For most teams this obviously wouldn’t be noteworthy, but because the Pirates haven’t had a winning season since 1993 and collapsed down the stretch last year let’s go ahead and note it: Pittsburgh has started selling playoff tickets.

Current Pirates season ticket holders will have the first opportunity to purchase postseason tickets, which includes ll potential home games at PNC Park in each of the Wild Card, National League Division Series, National League Championship Series and World Series.

Pirates full season, 41-game, 20-game and 10-game season ticket holders will begin receiving their postseason information as soon as today. These fans will have the opportunity to purchase postseason strips prior to the fans who have placed a deposit on tickets for the 2014 season and the general public.

And then individual playoff game tickets will go on sale in late September.

OK, the Pirates have 32 games left, and are 22 games over .500. The next closest teams are the Nationals (.500) and Diamondbacks (3 games over .500)

So for the Pirates to NOT make at least the 1 game playoff, the collapse would need to be pretty amazing, even a little better than last years.

If they go 10-22, they would end up at 86-76. The Diamondbacks would need to go 20-13 to tie (not sure of the tie-breakers). The Nationals would need to go 21-11. Both the Diamondbacks and Nationals could do this (not extremely likely, but they could go on a small run)

So 10-22 would be a pretty horrible ending basically a little worse than the 16-36 that they did in the last 52 games last year. Considering 10-22 is only 32 games, one could easily see a shorter collapse than one as impressive as the 52 game one last year.

You are right in saying this, I am just concerned that they won’t go far when they make it because they won’t upgrade the right field position by making a trade. Lambo, Tabata, and Synder can take you so far. Garrett Jones is just dying, so I hope before Aug 31st they make a trade.

Unless I’m mistaken, they’d have to finish ahead of Cincinnati in order to *host* the WC play-in game. With St. Louis winning tonight they are out of 1st place in the NL Central.

Obviously they are getting 82 wins. That’s certain. They will likely need to hit 94-95 or so in order to win the division, preferably those coming H2H against the Cardinals, who they play 6 more times.

Ultimately, it will come down to the final 2 weeks of the season, when they play Cincy H2H 6 times in 9 games as to who ends up hosting the WC play-in game.

One thing is for sure: There is a whole generation of Pirates fans who have been waiting for a September with this much meaning.